1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a lighting apparatus which uses laser light as a light source.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a lighting apparatus, etc., there are instances where light, is not emitted evenly from the light exiting face, and unevenness such as illumination unevenness and color unevenness occurs in an irradiation region which is the region that is illuminated when an object is irradiated with light. Various devices and methods for reducing such unevenness have been proposed.
For example, as a technique for reducing unevenness in the irradiation region, there is a known technique in which an optical component, which has a honeycomb structure of seamlessly arranged regular hexagon-shaped concave or convex small lenses, is provided in the light exiting face of a lighting apparatus. This honeycomb-structured optical component is attached to the lighting apparatus as a cover to thereby create light attenuation areas having different transmissivity so as to interfere with the light and reduce unevenness in the irradiation region while maintaining light transmissivity.
In addition, a lighting apparatus described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2012-173522 (Patent Literature 1) reduces unevenness in the periphery of an irradiation region by using, in the light exiting face, an optical component having randomly arranged small lenses.